MARCS IP 700 vs 800

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Volfirefighter

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Question for the technical gurus. I noticed that amongst the MARCS IP sites there are only a few that use 800 Mhz frequencies; the rest use 700 Mhz frequencies. All of those that do use 800 Mhz are simucast systems. What about the simulcast sites requires the 800 Mhz frequencies?
 

SCPD

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There are several 700 MHz simulcast systems including Cuyahoga County up here in NE Ohio. Take another look.
 

Volfirefighter

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I do see that there are simulcast sites that use 700 Mhz but all of the sites with 800 Mhz frequencies were simulcast sites so I am still curious as to why only a handful out of 70+ use 800 Mhz.
 

SCPD

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Well I don't really know enough about how it's handled - wa8pyr or mtindor would I guess. I don't know if they eventually will all be 700 MHz.

But also up in this area Lake and Geauga counties had their own systems and just moved over to MARCS IP and kept the same 800 frequencies they had. Probably the case in other areas also.
 

kf8yk

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The choice of 700 or 800 MHz has nothing to do with simulcast vs single site, it's just what was available for licensing at the time the sites were built.

Most of the new sites use 700 MHz since there were no 800 MHz pairs free in the area or they were tied up in the rebanding freeze. The few 800 MHz sites obtained their channels by reuse of frequencies from the older systems they replaced.

There's no technical restriction on mixing 700 & 800 MHz frequencies in the same site, other than having an antenna system to handle it. So in the future you could see sites with both, especially after the old MARCS system is shut down and the old 800 MHz frequencies are used to add capacity to MARCS-IP.
 

SCPD

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Yep

Thanks Eric - I was gonna mention you in the list of who might know but I couldn't remember your username! :)
 

wa8pyr

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Question for the technical gurus. I noticed that amongst the MARCS IP sites there are only a few that use 800 Mhz frequencies; the rest use 700 Mhz frequencies. All of those that do use 800 Mhz are simucast systems. What about the simulcast sites requires the 800 Mhz frequencies?

Nothing requires 800 MHz for simulcast; the sites you're seeing are actually licensed to, owned, operated and maintained by the entities they're licensed to. They replaced their old Motorola or EDACS systems and are working under a partnership with the state to utilize the extra capacity of the MARCS-IP system controller.

See Ohio MARCS IP: Local Partnerships - The RadioReference Wiki for a deeper explanation of the partnership levels.

However, once the old system is decommissioned early next year, the 800 MHz frequencies it's currently using will be moved over to the new system, so you'll eventually see a mixture of 700 and 800 frequencies at most sites.
 
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